Successful restaurants have proven that China has a taste for good Western food, at the right price

----By Mark Godfre

That China has a taste for Western food is obvious from the mass appeal of fast-food fare like KFC and McDonald's. But the Chinese are also growing fond of a decent meal in a proper sit-down western dining experience. Antoinette Martin left her role as manager of a well-known New York restaurant to move to Beijing with her husband, a chef, in February 2006. The couple took over three struggling Western-style restaurants opened in Beijing by a family friend. "He said, 'Come out and revive my restaurant!'" recalls Martin, sitting in The American Cafe, one of her current ventures in the capital.

Martin, 36, left her role as manager of the Olive Tree Cafe Comedy Cellar, a Middle Eastern restaurant in New York's fashionable East Village. A curiosity for Chinese culture made the move easier. "I'd heard there's a new revolution happening here," says the tall Californian, who hasn't been homesick since making the move.

Running three Western restaurants in a city with a limited number of Westerners, Martin knows she must draw local Chinese customers. "Tastes are very different," she concedes. The clientele of The American Cafe, located in Beijing's business district, breaks 50-50 between locals and expatriates. Mexican Kitchen, whose cuisine is less familiar to Chinese and even Europeans, draws a more American crowd - only 30 percent of business comes from locals. At Little Italy, however, the crowd varies from day to day. "Some Sundays it's full of Chinese!" Martin says.

Western restaurants open and close practically every other day in Beijing. The bad ones fail because they try to be all things to all people, says Martin. Simplicity is best, she advises. The American Cafe wasn't doing well when she took over, because "they were trying to do fine dining and white table cloths, but with Hollywood posters on the wall."

Getting it right

Martin tore down the posters and rewrote the menu. "I said to the staff, 'If you go to a diner in the USA the milkshakes are going to be good.'" She chooses the restaurant's music - jazz and smooth blues - as carefully as she writes her menu. "Customers come in here and get what they expect and if they don't know the food they'll still like the atmosphere."

The casualty rate of Western restaurants in Beijing is also due to woeful market research and low professionalism, particularly at a rash of Italian restaurants that have opened across the capital, says Martin. "It's easy to open something quickly. I see a lot of cut and run. There's no real interest in the product or the service. They don't care to prepare or research the recipes. Food should be something to enjoy, not just to get full on. They think, 'I can open something - a Western restaurant with spaghetti Bolognese. I'll open and try to get rich Chinese to come in.' That's the mentality."

On pricing, Martin says she tries to be competitive, with main dishes between RMB30 and RMB50 (€3-5). "At Little Italy a bottle of wine can be RMB100 to RMB1,300. We cross different lines ... Those who want pizza can get one baked in a brick oven for RMB60. If you want osso buco you have to pay. Osso buco has to be cooked all day, so it's RMB160 a serving. You're getting value or you're getting once-a-week osso buco." Good service is a competitive advantage that Martin has honed at her restaurants. Waiters are typically easy to find and enthusiastic, but need training.

Costs and benefits

The overhead for running a restaurant is comparatively cheap in China. American Cafe pays waiters RMB1,000 each month and provides a free meal a day. Supplies are either imported or purchased from a local supermarket, though Martin says she can't always find all the ingredients she needs. (Her husband goes to Dangzhao Market each morning at six to buy chicken and other supplies "because he doesn't trust some of the suppliers a lot.") "In New York you're dealing with insurance, litigation are constant issues. Someone falls in front of your store and it's a million dollars (€750,000) in damages. That's not an issue here."

This being China, copycats are plentiful, and their tactics have taken Martin by surprise. "I had no idea what we'd be up against," she says. "I have to be careful how I write my menus! I'd like to describe in detail all that's in each dish and I can't do that. One restaurant took the menu from the Mexican Kitchen and even copied the special menu my husband prepared for Valentine's Day. I saw it word for word on another restaurant's menu! Of course they can't execute it properly, but it is annoying." Other imitators are more direct. "People come in to Mexican Kitchen and outright say, 'Give me a number for the tortilla supplier,' and I say, 'Do your own research!'"

After rescuing her business partner's restaurants, Martin is now looking to open some of her own. "I'd like to have Mexican Kitchens all over China!" she says. A downtown Mexican Kitchen is in the pipeline. So are a kosher restaurant and a bar an idea she got from a since defunct British-style pub she frequented after coming to take over the American Cafe. "The bar used to order food from us for their customers. I'd come in and take notes about the food and have a beer afterwards."

But running a successful bar or restaurant in Beijing is a fine science, a point made when the local pub went and with it the orders for the American Cafe. "The space was too big maybe," she says of the closure of the English pub. "I'd do it in a place I know." Beijing was a good move for the Martins. "China has been great, very challenging. It's been great doing things we couldn't do in New York-We can experiment with things and come up with new dishes that no one is doing here."